The War on J Street

As the dovish pro-Israel lobby J Street prepares for its first conference next week, a familiar array of Likudniks and neocons has mobilized to destroy it. The anti-J Street campaign has marked something of a watershed for the organization. Previously, AIPAC and its Washington allies professed to be unconcerned with J Street’s rise and publicly sneered at its significance. But now the group’s growing profile (including, notably, a long cover story in the New York Times Magazine) seems to have convinced the Israel hawks that stronger measures were needed.

For those who followed the similar recent attacks against Chas Freeman and Human Rights Watch, the contours of the latest campaign have thus far been familiar, and the cast of characters similar. In rapid succession, The Weekly Standard‘s Michael Goldfarb was reportedly calling the offices of each of the conference’s 150+ congressional sponsors, trying to get them to pull out; Commentary‘s Jennifer Rubin was proclaiming J Street’s imminent demise whenever she took a break from forecasting the impending collapse of the Obama administration; and The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg was passive-aggressively disseminating the neocon talking points of the day, all while insisting throughout that he was not taking sides. All old hat.

But as the conference approaches, J Street is still standing. While a handful of congressmen bailed from the conference host committee under the initial pressure from the right, and the organization scratched one previously-obscure poetry act who had written some overheated lines comparing Guantanamo to Auschwitz, it seems to have staunched the bleeding. Around 150 of the initial 160 congressional host committee members remain on the bill, and last week brought the announcement that National Security Advisor James Jones will keynote the conference. The organization’s leadership had to know the attacks were coming — in fact, they would likely have been far more worried if AIPAC and its allies did not feel the need to mount such an campaign — and, barring any sudden catastrophes in the next week, the damage could have been far worse.

In the meantime, the smears are getting uglier. Witness yesterday’s piece by Lenny Ben-David, a former top AIPAC staffer and current West Bank settler. The gist of Ben-David’s critique of J Street is that the group has been known to associate with Arabs (who, as we know, are a mendacious and bloodthirsty race.) See Spencer Ackerman for a worthwhile demolition of Ben-David’s scarcely-concealed racism, and Ben-David’s former AIPAC colleague MJ Rosenberg for more background on this unsavory character.

I have to imagine that these are exactly the battle lines that J Street’s leadership is hoping for. From the perspective of winning over the American Jewish community, they could not ask for more than to have their most prominent attacker be not merely an AIPACer and Likudnik, but a settler to boot. The campaign against J Street will only succeed if it can peel off the liberal center of US Jewry; for the battle to turn into liberals against neocons would be the best possible outcome for J Street, which has no aspirations to win over the Commentary crowd. So far, the group seems to have been successful at courting the liberal center — the likes of Martin Indyk, Eric Yoffie, and Jonathan Chait are all appearing at the conference.

In any case, one must once again marvel at the short-sightedness of Israel’s hardline supporters in the U.S., who seem intent on alienating the American Jewish community that is Israel’s most valuable strategic asset. The hawks seem to think that if only J Street is crushed, American Jews will obediently fall back into line behind Israel’s every action. But I think they misread the mood of the Jewish community, the changes it has undergone in recent years, and the extent to which J Street is designed to play a moderating, rather than a radicalizing, role on Jewish public opinion.

The basic premise of J Street is that it is possible to be both liberal and pro-Israel. If the hardliners succeed in destroying J Street, and with it any viable outlet for liberal pro-Israel sentiment, they will force the younger generation of American Jews — who are overwhelmingly Obama Democrats — to choose between support for Israel and liberalism. No doubt some will choose Israel, but far more will choose liberalism. And in that case Israel will face a predicament far bleaker than whatever it fears from J Street.

7 Responses to The War on J Street

There is nothing inconsistent between settlements and Zionism. The one follows from the other. After all, if Israel “belongs” to the Jews then why can’t they settle there? In fact Israel’s laws encourage it. The point being that if settlements is the problem then it would be better to first address the underlying tenets of Zionism. Is J-Street going to do this?

>>>>>If the hardliners succeed in destroying J Street, and with it any viable outlet for liberal pro-Israel sentiment, they will force the younger generation of American Jews — who are overwhelmingly Obama Democrats — to choose between support for Israel and liberalism. No doubt some will choose Israel, but far more will choose liberalism. And in that case Israel will face a predicament far bleaker than whatever it fears from J Street.<<<<

My thoughts exactly.

The Israeli/Palestinian question will be decided in the US, not however by either of the combatants, especially Israel. This war must be waged amongst Jewish/Americans. If J street and its allies win this fight Israel will survive, not of course as Zionists envision it, but a home for Jews in Palestine will be assured. If they lose, well….

If Israelis remains wedded to a rabid Zionism that is characterized by Nazi racism and Afrikaner polices of the ghettoization of Gaza (Warsaw) and apartheid on the West Bank, Israel will become ever more despised & isolated from the global community. In the end the US will abandon Israel, including Jewish/Americans because neither can long justify supporting a rogue state slaughtering innocents.

Public opinion changes at a glacial pace, but it developes a momentum that is very hard to reverse. I submit, that world opinion against the zionist cause as is presently being implemented has turned decisively, and with each new petulant outcry of antisemitisim, accelerates steadily downward. There was a time when the US and others could thumb their noses at the rest of the world, and brandish their veto at the UN Security Council. That is getting more difficult, and each event extracts a growing price from the US, a price that it can ill afford to pay. It does not take a rocket scientist to conclude how this will all end. Unfortunately those who most need to be attuned to this change, seem least likely to appreciate it.

Sir, there will be hard times ahead for “J Street”, no doubt, however in the long run it is clear that they will support Medinat Israel within the Green line and at the same time work for peace with the Palestinians in Cisjordan/West Bank, Al Quds/East Jerusalem, Gaza. And let us not forget the Syrian Golan. It does not make sense to start “secret” discussions with the support of a mediator (Turkey) and then go away with no results, knowing that this was the intention from start by Mr. Olmert/Ms. Livni. There is an understanding that AIPAC was aware of this.